“The likability of any player is always up for debate, and people will always use their own moral compass to judge Luis Suarez, but that’s not something I tend to focus on. I concentrate on what he is like with me on a day-to-day basis, and he is a great man.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“The key for scouting is trying to predict when the player is peaking.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Liverpool give young players a good opportunity.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“It’s very difficult to say that a player is irreplaceable because the nature of football means that someone always steps in to take the shirt and provides different elements to your team.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and be able to laugh at yourself.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’m very proud of my work at Watford in what has been a short period.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“The word you sometimes get is ‘deluded,’ they use, but for me, I’ve always been very positive.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“If I was making the decision normally, with my heart, I’d never leave Celtic. My life was great. I loved the city. I loved the people. I loved the club. I had a wonderful life. If you think of all those things, you’d never move.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“When you have a son in football like Anton, it will always be deemed as if he got the prop up and given the contract, no matter how hard he works. So much so that when he was offered a deal at Chelsea, I advised him not to take a professional contract.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“My biggest mentor is myself, I’ve always felt.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I always say to the players, ‘You can either create or wait.’ If you’re waiting, you’re relying on someone else, as simple as that. But if you create it, you’ve got to do it.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“It turns out I share a birthday with Jose Mourinho. He is exactly 10 years older than me.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“How you succeed is how you deal with failure. Whatever way you dress it up, something hasn’t worked.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I suppose that fear of failure is what drives me on.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I like teams to control and dominate the ball so the players are hungry for the ball.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“If you give a good player time, he can kill you.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“When you’re so young, it’s important to understand exactly what your role is. Not just look good – you have to be efficient and effective.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Whatever country you’re in, you have to want to be in with a chance of winning.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Wherever you go, you have to go win.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’m not arrogant enough to think that I will be in a job through anything. Any manager will tell you that you have to win games, and you have to get results. You have to perform.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I will only ever do my best.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I went in to Reading with the full backing of the chairman, who was great to me, and I got 20 games. Even though it was a three-year project, and I was the guy who knew the club more than anyone, I got the sack after 20 games. Funnily enough, it had just started to pick up, but they lost their patience.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“What I learned was it does not matter how much support you have in the boardroom, from the directors, the executives: you have to get results, and you have to win.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Simon Mignolet has been first class.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Young players will run through a barbed wire fence for you.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“A winning model would mean trying to get the best possible players that you can, at whatever age they are; it doesn’t matter.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I think sometimes you can want to win too much, and the focus comes away from what allows you to win.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“When you manage Liverpool, you know the Manchester United job is gone.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Coutinho is a joy to watch.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’ve always been a great lover of Barcelona and the structure of the club.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“When I was at Liverpool, I asked about Van Dijk when he was at Groningen and then at Celtic. But I was told he wouldn’t be for us at the time. Van Dijk could have jumped from Celtic to a Liverpool.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Would I work in Scotland again? Of course I would. I loved every single second of being there.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I try to implement my own ways of making teams successful.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“One of my strengths is I learn, and I like to learn from all sorts of people in all walks of life.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“He’s a big player, and the big players score the big goals and make the big contributions in the big games. That’s what determines a great player. That’s what Steven Gerrard is.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“The team is the most important thing.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Racism – whether it’s in football or society, there’s absolutely no place for it.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Criticism comes with the territory when you don’t win games.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I always like the players to be within 10 to 15 metres of each other. When the attacking players try what I am asking them to do, and it breaks down, there are players close enough to then go and win the ball back and counter press the game.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“My teams have always been dominant about having the ball but having the ball to create opportunities. That’s always been the clear way of my work.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Believe it or not, the sky is blue here in Glasgow. I absolutely love it here.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’ve got huge respect for Arsenal as a club.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“You make mistakes in your life, especially when you’re young.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Liverpool is one of the superpowers of world football.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“If you’re happy, ultimately, that’s all that matters.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“You can have X amount of pounds in your bank every month, but if you’re not happy, and you’re not finding peace in what you’re doing, it doesn’t really matter.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I love the Premier League, the quality of the players, the quality of the coaches. There are great challenges. But there are arms and legs flying off managers down there.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Celtic are one of the great clubs of the world. There’s a pressure here that’s different. You have to win every game. There’s not a club in England that has that.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“What you have in Scotland is an unpredictability with surfaces – and I’ve already said you don’t get good games on artificial turf – and that can affect performances and results.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’ve always had one in my teams – that sort of central pivot that orchestrates the game.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“My decision was that after nearly three years at Celtic – with everything we’d achieved and the success we’d had on the pitch, the improvements off the pitch – then it was time to move on to my next challenge.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“My message is always very, very clear: I’m very concentrated on the game.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’ve been fortunate enough to work with lots of really good players, so it would be disrespectful to single out the best.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“You always want to win games and to develop the team, so it’s very important that you have encouragement from your fans.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“If you are going to be successful, there is no point in having three or four top individual players, because those players will win you games, but they will never win you titles.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I had a wonderful time at Liverpool. My three and a half years there was a great experience.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“There’s different types of strikers: Harry Kane is a wonderful finisher, Jamie Vardy has great pace and has come onto the scene exceptionally well and is playing consistently, and Wayne Rooney is a player I have admired during all of his career.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“As a coach, we are not magicians; we work with the players and look to improve them and give them every opportunity, but if you are not creating or scoring goals over a consistent period of time, it is difficult for you as a coach.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’ve studied Spanish, but I need to improve. I’ll probably improve when I work in the country one day. For most people, when they travel to a country, their language becomes better.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I speak to the Spanish players that we have in Spanish.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Liverpool is one of the great institutions of the world, and you understand that when you see it from the outside, but you only really get to know when you go inside as manager.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Sometimes keepers are looked at differently to outfield players.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I think wherever you go, you have to go to win.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’m enriched by all my experiences, good and bad, but I’ve always tried to remain committed in my life as a coach and always positive.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I think all you can worry is that you make the team the very best they can be.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“You can go to Old Trafford as Liverpool manager and get a draw, and it’s not a bad result. At Celtic, there’s an expectancy to win home and away.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“The biggest thing you can have as a football manager is happiness and energy.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I know how quickly it can all change. I nearly won the title at Liverpool, and everybody’s saying, ‘Sign him up’ – then, very quickly, I was out.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“As a guy from Northern Ireland who supported Celtic and worked in football, I’m living my dream here.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“All my career I have done that, worked with talents, improving 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I love my work.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“When I went in to Liverpool, my job in the first season was to cut the budget. You only need to look at the players who left. Maxi Rodriguez, Alberto Aquilani, Pepe Reina.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I always felt that by the time I would leave Chelsea I was ready to be a number one. I’d had a long apprenticeship so when I was to go, it would to be a No. 1.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I’ve always been inspired by people who can speak other languages.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I always think if you speak to someone in their second language, you speak to their head. If you speak in their first, you speak to their heart. I’ve always tried to let players see that.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Football’s a global game.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“The only thing that Celtic doesn’t have is the propaganda, which is the Premier League. In every other aspect of football, Celtic is a huge club: fan base, stadium and history. They have a fantastic history. What it doesn’t have is the opportunity to play in the Premier League.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“It was important for me, when I left a club like Liverpool, to one, have a breather, but then my next job, I needed pressure. And there’s a pressure at Celtic. It’s a huge club; there’s an expectancy to win every game.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Refereeing is always an issue where you want to have the best officials, and I think the referees do their very best in the games, but we always want to improve standards across the league.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“All players, whether they’re Spanish, French, English, Welsh, want to play football. To play.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Everything we did on the training pitch, we did with the ball. You’ll never see a pianist run around his piano. People ask me, ‘Why don’t you run through the forest, through the trees?’ Well, I’ve never seen a tree on a football field.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“My father loved European football; he also loved the Brazilian team. His own dad loved the Brazilian team.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“The experience of travelling, getting familiar with other languages, other cultures definitely helps. It makes you a better person.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“I am better when I have control. I am not a power freak. But my point is that I need to feel that I can manage the team and have a direct, clear line through to the owners. Once that becomes hazy, for me, there is a problem.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“Celtic are the club I supported as a boy, and I loved every moment I was there. For me to leave there, I knew I was going to have to not just come to a club, but I had to come to a special club that was going to allow me to connect with the players and hopefully the supporters, too.”
― Brendan Rodgers
“All I can ever promise is that I will do my very best.”
― Brendan Rodgers
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